Old Review Storage

Tag: demo

Here’s a five track demo by Lafayette Indiana’s The Enders; a blend of Punk and Metal and a smattering of Rock. The disc’s tracks are performed admirably by the power-trio. The band is comprised of Ben Hagood on guitar and vox, Sam Kock on bass and backing vox and Kyle Martin pulling percussion duties.

The songs, in general, are fast paced. However, the center tracks of the demo: Track 2 Martyr, Track 3 Split Decision and especially Track 4 What If I are considerably shorter and more raw sounding than the intro and outro tracks. I have it on reasonable authority that the shorter punkier sound is the more current direction of the band. I certainly approve of that. While I’m not gonna bag on the more metallic tracks, they are seriously over my three minute attention span mark.

Musically speaking the vocals remind me of a strange mix of Nuclear Assault and Sacred Reich, which is odd, but works with compact, punchy riffs and the minimalist drums. Guitar solos in some of the tracks are a bit much, but that is the anti-epic metal in me talking again. If you’re down with solos, so be it. That’s your problem.

The bottom line here is that The Enders have busted out a solid demo, but I knocked of a few points for the excesses of the first and last track in both duration and unnecessary filler. With that, the middle three tracks are like the delicious center of the tootsie-pop. So support your local Midwest punk-metal-thrash-rock bands and go see The Enders, buy this demo so they can make more music like tracks 3, 4 and 5.

A couple notes: if you have cross-fade turned on, you might want to turn it off. The tracks end and start rather abruptly. Oh, and make sure you listen all the way to the end of the final track to get the wicked sweet thrash breakdown.